Crush
by RemyKat
Summary: Oneshot set in the week before the tv show starts, Nicole Haught comes to Purgatory. Sorry about typos, will fix them when I get a chance!


'Really, it's fine,' Nicole sighed in frustration at her brothers, who were trying to unpack the van for her.

'But...' Donnie, her eldest brother started.

Nicole cut him off. 'Seriously, just put the boxes in the front room, I will sort things out when I have time...and furniture.  
We'll go get some lunch and then I guess you guys want to head back out this afternoon...?' She left the sentence hanging, not quite a question, not quite a request.

'Well,' Mikey, the younger of the brothers, though still five years older then Nicole, gave Donnie a look that clearly said he wanted to get home to his wife sooner rather than later. They'd been married only a couple of months.

'Okay,' Donnie said slowly, 'but if you need help next weekend, you just call me.'

Nicole turned away to hide her smile from her overprotective brother. He was sweet, always watching out for her, but at times it had become too much and had even been part of the reason she chose a post this far away from her family's hometown.

* * *

She watched the van disappear around the corner, and then turned to look at her new home. It wasn't big, but neat enough and plemty of space for her and the cat. Needed a bit of work, but there was still inheritance money left to cover the important repairs.

She went in and looked at the pile of boxes. She knew she should start, but the past few days of packing and travelling were catching up on her, and the list of things she needed to do was longer than she could get her head around just then.  
She opened a box, and sat down to go through the things inside, but almost immediately her mind wandered back to lunch with her brothers. They'd gone to the bar in town, Shorty's, and her brothers had immediately started on her.

'Why on earth do you want to come to a place like this?' Mikey had hissed at her, in embarrassingly close proximity to the older woman taking their order. Nicole knew she'd heard, and smiled an awkward apology at her. The woman looked stern, hard, but her eye twinkled and she'd given Nicole a small wink - enough to give her the courage she needed.

'Look, you both know why I did, and you also both know I am capable of looking ater myself, and, according to the badge, a whole lot of other people too.' She took a breath and looked at her brothers with a level gaze for a moment, before turning back to the woman still waiting for their order. 'Hi there, I'm Nicole, Nicole Haught. The new police officer.' She took a gamble that in a small town, her arrival would have been talked about for days before she got here.

The gamble paid off, or the woman was smart enough to understand what she was aiming for.

'Well, of course, Sheriff Nedley has been talking you up.' She smiled. 'I'm Gus, Shorty's in the kitchen just now...'

Nicole's attention drifted as a young woman walked into the bar. She didn't mean to stare, but the girl walked in and it seemed to Nicole that the room lit up. A few of the regulars greeted her cheerfully, but Nicole couldn't catch her name from any of them.

Gus had stopped talking, and was looking at Nicole with a knowing smile. 'And that is Miss Waverly Earp.' She winked again, seeing the colour in Nicole's cheeks. 'Now, what can I get you all?'

Her brothers had turned then to teasing her incessantly about the girl, who, as it turned out, worked in the bar. Nicole's brief bravado was right out of the window at this point, and she took the good natured ribbing quietly. There were no more comments about why she was running away to a place like that now though, only one from Donnie as they walked back to the van.

'Jokes aside, you be careful here, Nic.' He'd said, 'It's a small town, people talk and some people have funny ideas.'

She'd nodded back, an appropriate serious half frown on her face, though her mind was full of the girl in the bar.

* * *

Three days later and the place looked a bit more lived in. Nicole had gone to the station an introduced herself to her new colleagues, and it had come up that all she owned was a mattress and a few boxes of things. The rest of that day and the next her door had almost never been closed, the number of people stopping by saying 'oh I had this laying around, thought perhaps it would be useful for you?' and then produced some helpful bit of furniture. Sheriff Nedley himself had awkwardly turned up with a bedframe for her.

The trail of helpful people had eased off then, and she could start organising her little house. The result was quite a mix of styles and tastes, but it felt perfect to Nicole, her first home that belonged only to her, she didn't have to share or cimpete with anyone for space. Yes, perfect.

She'd avoided the bar since the first day, but felt a drink to celebrate might be in order that evening. Perhaps some of the people who had helped her out would be there and she could thank them properly.

Or perhaps Waverly would be there? A small voice in her head whispered. She blushed even just thinking about it, and shook her head. A crush on someone the first week in a new town? That was ridiculous. And anyway, the girl was bound to be straight - that was Nicole's curse!

Shorty's was surprisingly busy for a Tuesday evening, but Nicole managed to get herself a drink (not served by Waverly) and found a spot a bit out the way where she could watch the people of the town she had come here to serve and protect.

'A bit rough around the edges, but they're good people.' Nicole jumped at the voice by her ear. She turned to find Gus leaning against the wall next to her. She smiled.  
'You might have read my mind, Gus.' She acknowledged the woman, showing she remembered her, despite the distraction of their previous meeting.

They chatted for a few minutes, before Gus pushed herself off the wall and smiled. 'Well, I have to get back to work.' She paused, and looked at where Waverly stood at the bar. 'You should introduce yourself.'

Nicole looked to where Gus was indicating and blushed. 'Ahh, yes, I will.'

'Good.' Gus nodded and pushed her way back into the crowd by the bar.

Nicole watched Waverly for a few more moments, then, seeing her drink was almost dry, got off the stool she had perched herself on and headed for the bar, heart in her throat and her eyes firmly on Waverly.

She was a few people out from the bar when she caught Waverly's eye. Waverly smiled, right at her, and with that Nicole's resolve crashed. She reached through the people waiting at the bar to leave her glass, mumbled a thank you that no-one would hear over the noise in there, and headed for the exit, avoiding anyone's eye.

* * *

Nicole wasn't due to start her duties until that Friday, so Thursday was really the last free day for grocery shopping. Nicole hated grocery shopping - well, most kind of shopping really - but she squared her shoulders and ventured out to the store a few blocks from her place.

While picking out cat food - she was sure it was more expensive up here, did people in Purgatory not keep cats? - she turned slightly and just caught a glimpse of brown hair walking pat the aisle she was in. Waverly, of course.

'Right,' she said to herself, remembering Gus' words to her, 'this time I will say hello.'

She walked around the corner of the next aisle, but her target seemed to have vanished. She turned, confused and almost ran into a stack of bean tins, only just stopping herself, but knocking a box of cereal down with her basket in the process. 'Shit!' She breathed, and knew she was blushing bright red as she picked the offending box up. No chance of saying hello now, she decided, nerves getting the better of her. But there she was, walking down towards the bean tin display, oblivious of Nicole.

In a snap decision that later she would cringe about, Nicole ducked behind the the bean display until Waverly had passed by. She held her beath and then lrt it out in a big sigh of relief as she turned to stand up once Waverly had passed.

'Find what you're looking for down there?' a familiar voice spoke and Nicole looked up to see Gus and her twinkling eyes laughing at her.

'Uh, yeah, absolutely, thank you.' Nicole stuttered, finishing with a mumble explaining how very late she was and she had to get going, before practically running to the checkouts.

* * *

After her first shift, the first couple of weeks flew by, getting used to the system at the Sheriff's office, fitting in with the officers and staff already working there. Even getting used to her new patrol vehicle took the majority of a morning - it was not like the new fancy vehicle she'd been assigned at home.

Work was good though, kept her busy, stopped too many thoughts of Waverly from filling her mind, and left her too exhausted at night to lie awake thinking of impossible scenarios she could find herself in to talk to the youngest Earp sister. There was some wierd stuff going on around the Earps, though perhaps that was normal for such a high profile family in a small town. She had heard that the other surviving sister had turned up in somewhat suspicious circumstances, not long after poor Gus lost her husband.

Nicole had spent some downtime reading old case files, and - though she'd be the last to admit it - finding out what she could about the Earp family. She also discovered that Waverly was very much loved in the town, unlike her sister Wynonna, who really did seem to be a troubled sort.

So when Sheriff Nedley asked her to check out Shorty's, and make sure the disturbance reported the night before was 'a-okay' in his words, it wasn't until she was actually walking up to the door that Nicole realised she might actually have to talk to Waverly. No running away, no hiding behind stacks of bean tins, just an actual conversation.

'It's okay, Haught, you can do this.' She pep-talked herself. 'Hide behind the uniform, you're a police officer, act like it!' She knew the uniform gave her an attitude she found harder to find when off duty, she could manage to talk to one young woman, surely.

As she walked in she heard the sound of water running, and was faced with the rather amusing sight of her crush being sprayed by a broken beer tap. She stifled a laugh, and, the majority of her nerves forgotten in the moment, quipped, 'I didn't know Shorty's ran wet tshirt competitions.'


End file.
